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Published February 29, 2024. Postdated to keep it at the top of the page until the polls close.

Tuesday, March 5, 2024, is Oklahoma's presidential primary. On election day, polls are open from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. You'll be able to cast an early ballot at one or more locations in each county at the following times, which includes Saturday as it's a federal election:

  • Thursday, February 29, 2024: 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
  • Friday, March 1, 2024: 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
  • Saturday, March 2, 2024: 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Tulsa County will have early voting at Fair Meadows, 4609 E. 21st Street. This is a brand new location for early voting. Wagoner County, which will be voting on eight propositions affecting a total of 1.8 cents in county sales tax as well as a 5% lodging tax, has two early-voting locations: NSU Broken Arrow Campus, 3100 E New Orleans St., and First Baptist Church, Wagoner, 401 NE 2nd Street.

If you need help finding your polling place, or if you'd like to study a sample ballot before you go, the Oklahoma State Election Board has a one-stop-shop online voter tool. Put in your name and date of birth, and they'll look you up in the database, find your polling place and show you a photo of it and a map, will let you see a printable sample ballot, and, if you're voting absentee, it will show you when your ballot arrived at your county election board. Many precinct boundaries have changed since the last presidential cycle, and precinct locations may have changed very recently, so double-check before you head for the polls, and don't forget to bring your photo ID.

The presidential preference primary is the only thing on the ballot in Tulsa County. Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians all have a presidential primary, and Democrats have invited independent voters to vote in their primary.

By party in order of filing:

Republican:

Democrat:

Libertarian:

Jacob Hornberger, 73, Broadlands, VA, lawyer, president of the Future of Freedom Foundation
Chase Oliver, 38, Atlanta, GA, self-described activist

Joseph "Joe Exotic Tiger King" Maldonado is running for president as a Democrat from federal prison in Texas, but he is not on the Oklahoma ballot.

The Green Papers has the nitty-gritty of delegate allocation rules for Oklahoma Republicans and Democrats. In a nutshell, Democrat delegates are allocated proportionally for each congressional district and statewide, but a candidate must have at least 15% of the vote to receive any delegates. Republicans use a semi-proportional method in each congressional district (3 delegates each): If a candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, he gets all the delegates in that jurisdiction. If two candidates get more than 15%, the one with the most votes gets 2 delegates and 2nd place gets 1. If three candidates get more than 15% all three get a delegate. The 28 statewide at-large delegates are allocated proportionally among candidates who have at least 15% of the vote, but if any candidate gets more than 15% of the vote, he gets all 28. It's possible, if a big enough proportion of the vote goes to candidates with less than 15% of the vote, for some number of uncommitted delegates to be allocated.

I will be voting for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Republican presidential primary. More about that in another entry. I encourage Wagoner County voters to defeat the eight tax proposals on their ballot and demand that their county commissioners consult with the public before putting a massive tax increase on the ballot.

Ron-DeSantis-Presidential-Campaign-2024-900x0.pngIn my pre-presidential primary post, I provide a detailed explanation of the delegate allocation process for Oklahoma. As I mentioned in the same post, I am voting for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the 2024 Oklahoma Republican Primary.

A BatesLine reader asked me why the names of so many candidates are still going to be on the ballot, even though some dropped out weeks ago. The ballot was set in stone shortly after the end of the filing period in early December. It takes time to design and print ballots and to program ballot scanners to correctly tabulate that ballot design. Absentee ballots have to go out early, particularly for Oklahomans serving in the military. There's no time to reprint ballots. Ever year we've had a presidential primary, we've had no-longer active candidates on the ballot, and we often have barely- or never-active candidates running for city, county, and state offices. Even if a candidate isn't sending mail pieces or doing robocalls, you're still allowed to vote for him or her.

You might think that all this is moot. We appear to be headed for a Trump-Biden rematch. All but three of the Republican candidates (Trump, Haley, Stuckenburg) have suspended their campaigns. There hasn't been a serious primary challenge to an incumbent president since 1992, and only in the unusual circumstances of 1976, with an unelected incumbent, did a challenge have a real shot at succeeding. The Oklahoma County Republican Party is hosting an Official Trump Victory Party tomorrow night, a significant departure from the mandatory neutrality expected of party organizations during an active primary campaign.

But in the grand sweep of American history, the idea that you must actively campaign for president is a relative novelty. In 1952, within living memory, Dwight D. Eisenhower didn't give his first campaign speech until June 4, after the last primary had already been held. Eisenhower couldn't engage in partisan political activity until then; he was still on active duty as commander of NATO forces in Europe until May 31.

Democratic Party rule changes after 1968 began the movement toward binding primaries that put a premium on expensive mass media spending, but it wasn't until the advent of Super Tuesday in 1988 that the weight of the nominating process shifted definitively from caucuses and conventions to primaries. It was not unreasonable, as recently as 1968, for the incumbent president not to bother filing for primaries or to actively campaign.

Recently, Tara Ross wrote of the reluctance with which George Washington accepted his election to the presidency. Electors were elected in some states by popular vote and were appointed by the legislature in others, and each elector, at that time, cast two ballots. Every elector cast one of his ballots for Washington, with John Adams winning a majority of the remaining ballots, scattered among 11 candidates. None of the candidates actively campaigned for office. Electors cast their ballots for Washington not knowing if he would accept.

The vision of the Framers of the Constitution was that citizens would choose a trusted and knowledgeable neighbor from their city or region to represent them in the Electoral College, and that electors from each state would deliberate and cast ballots for the public servant best equipped to head serve as Chief Executive of the federal government. No campaigning would be necessary, because the electors would have the solemn obligation and privilege to research possible candidates, their successes and failures, their strengths and flaws. Ideally, ambition-driven campaigning would be viewed as unseemly and disqualifying.

But now presidential candidates must raise tens of millions of dollars and begin campaign efforts as soon as the midterm elections are over. To win the nomination, you must win primaries, which means you must reach a vast number of primary voters who are barely paying attention, and to get their attention you need money for TV ads, direct mail, robocalls and robotexts, and people to manage all of that, plus the ground game. Underperforming expectations in an early state means the money dries up; donors are no longer willing to invest in your future prospects.

DeSantis-OathOfOffice-2023.jpgIn 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis managed to win re-election by 20 percentage points in what had been a purple state (remember 2000?), while the expected "Red Wave" failed to materialize anywhere else. DeSantis used his power as governor effectively to accomplish a conservative agenda, removing two Soros-backed district attorneys who refused to prosecute crimes, dismantling DEI bureaucracies at the state's universities, re-creating the state's New College as a classical liberal arts college with a governing board filled with conservative thinkers like anti-woke campaigner Christopher Rufo, and defied the mighty Disney Corporation. While Trump was celebrating the vaccine he fast-tracked, DeSantis's appointed state Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, issued a caution for young men because of a higher risk of heart-related adverse effects.

At the heart of all of these DeSantis successes was a focus on results: understanding and wielding the authority that the voters had granted him to accomplish the priorities that he had promised the voters, hiring and appointing people with the intelligence, diligence, and character to accomplish the goals he set. You do not hear DeSantis or his fans making excuses for failure, mainly because he hasn't had many failures; DeSantis just gets things done.

Trump as graven imageDeSantis's polling lead began to disappear as partisan prosecutors began filing case after case attempting to put former president Donald Trump in prison or at least off of the ballot. Understandably but mistakenly, many Republican voters felt that the only way to defy politically motivated misuses of the justice system was to rally behind Trump. Trump and his allies attacked DeSantis's admirable record, minimizing his achievements and even making wild and ridiculous false claims (e.g., the guy who ousted two Soros DAs is somehow Soros's puppet). Trump ran to DeSantis's left on abortion, transgenderism, and woke Disney.

Trump and his followers asserted that Trump did not need to earn the 2024 GOP nomination but was owed it. DeSantis was accused of what seems to be the greatest crime in the opinion of too many: Being disloyal to Trump. To these people, it doesn't matter who would be the most effective Republican nominee and conservative chief executive: Loyalty, not to principle, not even to a party, but to one man, is the supreme virtue and disloyalty the unforgivable sin.

I rarely take time to watch movies -- I tend to unwind with a classic sitcom episode -- but a couple of months ago during a business trip, I took the time to re-watch a film I had seen and enjoyed, The Death of Stalin, Armando Ianucci's dark comedy about the power struggle around the demise of the murderous Soviet leader, starring Jeffrey Tambour as Gyorgy Malenkov and Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev. I followed it up with Downfall, a German-language dramatization of the final days of Hitler in his Berlin bunker, based in part on the account of the young woman who was the genocidal dictator's personal secretary.

Hitler complains about Apple in a Downfall memeShortly after the latter film was released, there was a frequently recurring video meme that repurposed the scene where Hitler has a conniption after the generals tell him that the remaining armies are unable to come to the rescue; new subtitles were added to adapt the scene to imagine various famous people reacting to bad news, for example, Hillary Clinton learning that she is about to lose the 2008 Democratic nomination for president to Barack Obama (language warning). Hilarious adaptations aside, Downfall is an enthralling, thought-provoking film.

The common element in the two movies is that, despite the terminal weakness of Dear Leader -- Stalin has had a stroke and lost control of his bladder and bowels, Hitler reigns over less than a square mile of territory and will soon kill himself -- his minions fall all over themselves to affirm their loyalty. These appear to be men of intelligence and leadership, they see that Dear Leader is leading the nation to disaster, there are enough of them to band together and push him out of power -- and yet they cannot break free. In Death of Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov (played by Michael Palin) loudly denounces his wife for crimes against the state and justifies dead Stalin's decision to imprison and presumably execute her, right until the moment she walks back through the door of their flat.

Now, Donald Trump is no genocidal autocrat, and he did a great deal of good during his term of office, but these movies brought to mind the cult of personality that has surrounded him and which he actively encourages. Nothing Trump does is ever a mistake. It may seem like a mistake that he appointed numerous cabinet members whom he now denounces as disloyal idiots, but really he is playing 10-dimensional chess and only seeming to fail in order to expose the swamp. Elected officials, hoping for a share of the public adulation Trump enjoys, fall all over themselves to praise Trump, to claim his endorsement, and to make excuses for him. Trump made many unforced errors, but he does not show any indication of having learned from his mistakes to become a more strategic, focused, and self-disciplined leader.

The November election may very well end up as a rematch between Trump and Biden (or more likely, the Democrats will replace Biden after Trump is officially nominated by the Republican National Convention), but for now we have a much better choice on tomorrow's primary ballot.

If enough of us who understand that Ron DeSantis is the best choice vote for him, he can win delegates to the national convention. Maybe God will bless us, as He has blessed Florida, with better leadership than we deserve.

In addition to Oklahoma's presidential preference primary on March 5, 2024, a small number of local jurisdictions will have propositions: Haskell, Norman, Oilton (2), Dewey County, Logan County (3), McIntosh County, Major County, and Sharon-Mutual Public Schools (Dewey & Woodward Counties). One school district, Mannsville in Carter & Johnston Counties, has a special election for an unexpired board seat.

The longest ballot will be in Wagoner County, which has eight propositions relating to county sales taxes:

  • Proposition No. 1: Make permanent the temporary 0.80% for operations and road and bridge improvements, originally approved in 2017
  • Proposition No. 2: Make permanent the temporary 0.10% for Sheriff Office capital outlay and operations, originally approved in 2017
  • Proposition No. 3: Make permanent the temporary 0.10% for General Fund purposes, originally approved in 2017
  • Proposition No. 4: Repurpose half of the permanent 0.30% fire tax approved in 2004 to establish and provide ambulance service.
  • Proposition No. 5: 0.125% for 30 years for courthouse facilities
  • Proposition No. 6: 0.25% permanent for jail facilities and operations
  • Proposition No. 7: 0.125% for 30 years for fairgrounds facilities
  • Proposition No. 8: 5% lodging tax in unincorporated areas for parks and recreational facilities

Proponents call the package "Half a Penny for Wagoner County," referring to the new taxes in propositions 5, 6, and 7, but not considering the increase in taxes resulting from making a penny in temporary taxes permanent. The Wagoner County website has a PowerPoint with details on each proposition "for educational purposes only... does not imply an endorsement."

Some opposition has arisen, pointing out that this amounts to a 38% increase in the county's sales tax rate, from 1.3 cents to 1.8 cents on the dollar. That's on top of the state 4.5% sales tax and any city sales taxes. A group called Taxed Enough Already (TEA) points out that this will push total sales tax rates in the cities of Coweta and Wagoner up to 10.3%. Compare that to the combined 8.417% we pay in the City of Tulsa. While Gov. Stitt just signed a bill eliminating the state sales taxes on groceries, to go into effect in August, city and county sales taxes will continue to be imposed on necessities.

John Dobberstein of the Broken Arrow Sentinel has a detailed report on the Wagoner County propositions, specifically on a presentation made by Wagoner County Engineer Rachael Cooper to the Broken Arrow City Council. "Cooper admitted no public hearings had been scheduled about the tax proposals but they would be forthcoming in the next 60 days." The same article has links to the ballot resolutions approved by the Wagoner County Commission and notes the haste with which the propositions were moved forward.

District 1 Wagoner County Commissioner James Hanning said information was given to him about the propositions the morning of a recent County Commission meeting and he was asked to vote to whether approve the language with no prior knowledge.

Hanning said he didn't know how the numbers were created but he was unsure 0.8% would be satisfactory or even enough to maintain roads in the county.

"We all, as well as Broken Arrow see the destruction of our roads and how much more it's costing us to fix them. So I don't know where the numbers came from. I'm simply telling you they were never presented to me," he told the Broken Arrow City Council after Cooper's presentation to them.

Firefighters in rural fire districts are unhappy that their permanent earmarked revenue stream is going to be cut in half (emphasis added).

Everyone agrees Wagoner County needs an ambulance service, and service should be improved across the county, but firefighters say taking away funds their departments rely on would hurt their ability to maintain equipment, attend training, or recruit and retain firefighters.

On Monday night, firefighters asked County Commissioner Christina Edwards about what data supports the cut.

Edwards, who supports the ballot measure, was unable to answer the question.

The community also asked County Commissioner Tim Kelly, who also supports the proposal, the same question in a separate meeting.

His response was, "I get it. That's all you need to know."

Kelly was asked if he could provide the statistics and he said he could if he wanted to....

Another concern firefighters have is the county acknowledges never consulting any of the fire departments before proposing the idea.

I don't live in Wagoner County, but I would be reluctant to approve a permanent earmarked tax or any temporary tax longer than 5 years duration, as it eliminates opportunities for rebalancing revenues and priorities as costs and needs change. The need for Proposition No. 4 illustrates the hazard: Those who believe that the 0.30% fire district sales tax is generating more revenue than needed for that purpose now have to fight the holders of the concentrated benefit to repurpose the tax.

It's sketchy, to put it mildly, to schedule a sales tax election on a low-turnout date, with no hearings prior to the vote to put the propositions on the ballot and even one of the County Commissioners apparently kept in the dark. That kind of behavior by elected officials shouldn't be rewarded by the voters.

MORE:

KTUL: Wagoner County's 'half a penny campaign' draws debate over real cost of tax propositions
KOTV: Special Election In Wagoner County Could Impact Sales Tax
Group of Wagoner County residents holds rally against proposed sales tax increase


ELECTION RESULTS: Tulsa County school district bond issues all passed by a wide margin, each proposition exceeding 80% in favor. School bond issues fell short of the 60% threshold in Canute, Krebs, Silo, and Tupelo. In Boswell, Tuttle, and Weleetka school districts, a majority of voters voted against the bond propositions.

Best turnout: Edmond Public Schools, where over 10,000 voters showed up to approve two school bond issues with just shy of 80% in favor of each.

Worst turnout: Nobody -- zero of 21 registered voters -- in the Billings Public Schools district in Garfield County showed up to vote on adding themselves to the Garfield County 522 Ambulance Service District in the Billings Public Schools district. According to the Enid News, there were four propositions across the county relating to the ambulance service: Voters in the existing ambulance district cast two separate votes to annex into the district the parts of the Billings and Pond Creek-Hunter school districts in Garfield County, approving by 132-6 and 128-7, respectively. Voters in the affected part of Pond Creek-Hunter voted 11-5 in favor. Presumably annexation needed approval from both the existing district and the area to be annexed; with a tie 0-0 vote, it appears that the Billings annexation (about 32.25 sq. mi. in the northeast corner of the county) will not go forward.

The Garfield County Election Board posted the sample ballots on its Facebook group, which is better than not at all, but Facebook makes it very unpleasant for people who do not have accounts to access content on that platform. The proposition states that approval would have raised property tax rates by 3 mills; for a homestead worth $100,000, 3 mills on appraised value of $11,000 less $1,000 homestead exemption amounts to $30 per year.

In Collinsville Ward 1, only 31 people voted. Incumbent Brad Francis beat challenger Gary Cole 17-14. For want of a nail....

Sand Springs Ward 6 incumbent councilor Brian Jackson won re-election with 63% of the 325 votes cast.

In the entire state of Oklahoma, with over 400 school districts, each with at least one seat up for election this year, there were only 22 seats that required a primary because more than two candidates ran. In 13 of those 22 seats, a candidate received more than 50% of the vote and was elected; a runoff between the top two candidates will held for only 9 seats.

This coming Tuesday, February 13, 2024, is Oklahoma's annual school board primary election. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. A list of all of Tuesday's elections across Oklahoma can be found on the Oklahoma State Election Board website. You can access your sample ballot on the election board's Oklahoma voter portal.

As one of 10 election days authorized by law this year, Tuesday is also host to some municipal elections and special elections, including several school district general-obligation bond issues. As in all non-Federal Oklahoma elections, early voting is available the Thursday and Friday before election day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at designated locations; in Tulsa County and most counties, that's at the county election board headquarters.

Only a small percentage of Tulsa County voters will have a reason to go to the polls. The only school board races on the ballot this Tuesday are those that drew three or more candidates. If a candidate receives more than 50% of the vote this Tuesday, he or she will be elected; if not, the top two candidates will advance to the school board general election on April 2, 2024, which is where you will find school board elections that have only two candidates.

There are several contested school board seats in Tulsa County, including three in the Tulsa Public Schools district, but all of them drew only two candidates, so you will see them on the ballot in April.

In Tulsa County, there are general obligation bond issues in Bixby, Sand Springs, and Jenks school districts, and a single city council seat each in Collinsville and Sand Springs.

Bixby school bond issues:

  • School district web page on the bond issue
  • Bixby bond issue Bond Transparency Act disclosure: The district has $192,440,000 left to be paid off from the 2022 and 2016 bond issues.
  • Proposition No. 1: $11,500,000 "for the purpose of constructing, equipping, repairing and remodeling school buildings, acquiring school furniture, fixtures and equipment and acquiring and improving school sites"
  • Proposition No. 2: $500,000 "for the purpose of purchasing transportation equipment"

Jenks school bond issues:

  • School district web page on the bond issue
  • Jenks bond issue Bond Transparency Act disclosure: "The School District has 49,945,000 in unissued building bonds authorized at an election held on the 10th day of February 2015." The disclosure lists specific bond expenditures from each election going back to 2019.
  • Proposition No. 1: $18,180,000 "for the purpose of constructing, equipping, repairing and remodeling school buildings, acquiring school furniture, fixtures and equipment and acquiring and improving school sites"
  • Proposition No. 2: $820,000 "for the purpose of purchasing transportation equipment"

Sand Springs school bond issues:

  • School district web page on the bond issue
  • Sand Springs bond issue Bond Transparency Act disclosure: The disclosure lists specific bond expenditures from each election going back to 2009. Sand Springs district has $23,308,959 in outstanding bond debt, including principal and interest.
  • Proposition No. 1: $111,875,000 "for the purpose of improving or acquiring school sites, constructing, repairing, remodeling and equipping school buildings, and acquiring school furniture, fixtures and equipment; or in the alternative to acquire all or a distinct portion of such property pursuant to a lease purchase arrangement"
  • Proposition No. 2: $2,625,000 "for the purpose of acquiring transportation equipment and auxiliary transportation equipment; or in the alternative to acquire all or a distinct portion of such property pursuant to a lease purchase arrangement"

For each candidate, ballot name is followed by full voter registration name in parentheses, if different, then age, party of voter registration, social media profiles and websites.

Collinsville city council, Ward 1:

(Larry Shafer was the only candidate for mayor and has been re-elected.)

Sand Springs city council, Ward 4:

(Beau Wilson, Ward 5, and Jim Spoon, at-large, were the only candidates in their respective races and have been re-elected.)

From the BatesLine Bookshelf, a very occasional feature on authors and books that have influenced me:

Cover of A Pattern Language, by Christopher AlexanderChristopher Alexander was an architect, but he might more appropriately have been called a philosopher of the built environment. He spent his career trying to describe and name the qualities that make a place -- a city, a neighborhood, a public square, a home, a room -- feel alive or dead.

Alexander influenced urban planning, but he thought central planning was useless, counterproductive. He believed in generative patterns that, if followed by individuals at a small scale, will produce living places at a large scale. He believed that these patterns flow out of the nature of order. Ultimately, that nature of order flows from God.

Beginning in the 1970s, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues the Center for Environmental Structure at the University of California at Berkeley identified patterns of design at every scale from regions to cities to neighborhoods to homes that they believed to be universal in generating lively places.

Eight books were published by the Center for Environmental Structure over a 20 year period from 1975 to 1995. Book 1, The Timeless Way of Building, explains the theory and application of patterns and how it relates to human nature. Book 2, A Pattern Language, identifies 253 specific patterns -- e.g., Promenade, Arcade, Small Public Square, Four-Story Limit, City-Country Fingers, 9% Parking -- shows examples, and discusses their interrelationships. The book was converted to hypertext, allowing easy navigation from one pattern to related patterns, and is available in that form to members of the PatternLanguage.com website. The website has a great deal of free content discussing Christopher Alexander's work, including a list and summary of the 253 patterns.

I wrote about Alexander's pattern language and the timeless way of design in a 2008 Urban Tulsa Weekly column:

Every building, neighborhood, town, and city is constructed from a collection of patterns. Alexander observed that some patterns are living and some are dead. The ones that are living are those that connect in some way with human nature--they attract people, making them feel at home and alive.

Dead patterns repel people, making them feel ill at ease and restless. A place shaped by dead patterns becomes neglected and uncared for and attracts trash, decay, and crime.

Most of the remaining books in that CES series get into specific examples of the application of this approach. I have not yet read A New Theory of Urban Design, but it looks interesting. All of these volumes are available for free hourly checkout on the Internet Archive, by following the link on each title.

  1. The Timeless Way of Building
  2. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction
  3. The Oregon Experiment: Applying a new planning paradigm for the University of Oregon campus.
  4. The Linz Cafe: The design of a single building in Linz, Austria.
  5. The Production of Houses: Building of a group of houses built in northern Mexico, seven principles which apply to any system of production.
  6. A New Theory of Urban Design
  7. A Foreshadowing of 21st Century Art: The Colour and Geometry of Very Early Turkish Carpets
  8. The Mary Rose Museum: A museum in Portsmouth, England, devoted to Henry VIII's ship

From the publisher's blurb for A Pattern Language:

At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people.

At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a formal system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment.

"Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today.

In The Timeless Way of Building, in chapter 2, "The Quality without a Name", Alexander describes the challenges of making a place come alive. It applies to people as well as blackbirds. It makes me think of the plazas that urban planners designed in the 1960s and 1970s, with artist's renderings that showed the plazas thronged with people; the reality is that the plazas were unpleasant and uncomfortable and became hangouts only for those who had nowhere else to be.

Suppose that I am trying to make a table for the blackbirds in my garden. In winter, when the snow is on the ground, and the blackbirds are short of food, I will put food out for them on the table. So I build the table; and dream about the clusters of blackbirds which will come flocking to the table in the snow.

But it is not so easy to build a table that will really work. The birds follow their own laws; and if I don't understand them, they just won't come. If I put the table too low, the birds won't fly down to it, because they don't like to swoop too close to the ground. If it is too high in the air, or too exposed, the wind won't let them settle on it. If it is near a laundry line, blowing in the wind, they will be frightened by the moving line. Most of the places where I put the table actually don't work.

I slowly learn that blackbirds have a million subtle forces guiding them in their behavior. If I don't understand these forces, there is simply nothing I can do to make the table come to life. So long as the placing of the table is inexact, my image of the blackbirds flocked around the table eating, is just wishful thinking. To make the table live, I must take these forces seriously, and place the table in a position which is perfectly exact.

In the 1990s, his ideas about patterns captured the imagination of computer scientists. I first saw his books for sale (to my surprise) at the 1996 OOPSLA (Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages & Applications) conference in San Jose, where he was the keynote speaker. You can watch his talk here and read it here. His work inspired popular software engineering textbooks like Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software and AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis.

I recently responded to an appeal from the Internet Archive, seeking testimonials about the value of their Wayback Machine, the tool that allows researchers to go back to earlier snapshots of webpages, including many from long-gone websites. Here's what I wrote:

Tell us about the first time you used the Wayback Machine, or when you first realized the power of web archives. What were you looking for, and why was it important to you?

I can't recall the very first time. My blog contains hundreds of links to the Wayback Machine. An early example is captured in a blog entry giving my readers access to Oklahoma election records that had been lost in the State Election Board's redesign of their website.

Please share a specific example or story where the Wayback Machine played a crucial role in preserving a valuable piece of internet history for you or others.

In 2003, I started a blog, BatesLine.com, focused on local issues in Tulsa and Oklahoma, and it's still going over 20 years later. Many of my entries involved links to local news outlets and other local bloggers. As I revisit some stories from previous years, I update dead links where possible with Wayback Machine links, so that the context for what I wrote is preserved. Local TV stations are particularly bad about redesigning websites and ditching old news stories in the process. Many bloggers gave up after a few years and let their sites and domains lapse. So much has disappeared from the live web in just a short period of time, so I'm very thankful for the Wayback Machine.

Any additional comments or thoughts you'd like to share about your experience with the Wayback Machine?

The biggest disappointment is that the Wayback Machine's crawlers often seems to have struggled with dynamic URLs (the sort with ? in the URL), so that many articles are missing from vanished websites. For example, Urban Tulsa Weekly (urbantulsa.com) was one of many alt-weekly newspapers that used Gyrobase CMS, and many of its articles, even those that I linked from my well-indexed site, are not available in the Wayback Machine. Even a popular and well-organized site like Charles G. Hill's dustbury.com, the longest continuously running Oklahoma blog, which used WordPress and static-looking URLs for a PHP backend, is missing many pages, including the final essay Charles wrote just before his untimely death in 2019. The index page including a link to the essay was captured, but not the essay itself. This is heartbreaking and hard to comprehend.


If you, too, are thankful for the Wayback Machine, you can show your appreciation with a tax-deductible contribution to the Internet Archive. They currently store over 99 petabytes of data, including 625 billion webpages going back to the earliest days of the World-Wide Web, and they make it all available for free.

MORE: The Internet Archive's Community Webs initiative has helped 175 libraries and archives to establish their own digital archives, including two in Oklahoma -- OKC's Metropolitan Library System and the Choctaw Cultural Center. They just received a $750,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to expand that program.

The late, great Pat Campbell, morning host on 1170 KFAQ in Tulsa for over a decade, had a number of regular, weekly guests. Friday was always an interesting contrast: Dr. Everett Piper, author and nationally-syndicated columnist, then-president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, now Osage County Commissioner, would be on Fridays during the 7 o'clock hour, speaking about cultural issues from a conservative Christian perspective. That would be followed by a weekly conversation with Rollo Tomassi, "The Rational Male," who presented a "red-pilled," somewhat cynical perspective on marriage and male-female relationships.

On April 12, 2019, Campbell had both Piper and Tomassi on at the same time for a discussion about whether men today ought to get married. On the KFAQ podcast page, the hour was labeled, "Pat Campbell hosts a debate, or a sharing of ideas, between Rollo Tomassi, The Rational Male, and Dr. Everett Piper, Oklahoma Wesleyan University, about marriage."

Here's the audio from that discussion, now uploaded to the Internet Archive.

This entry was prompted by a tweet thread from rapper and podcaster Zuby:

I would love to see a proper, long form discussion between traditional religious conservatives and secular red pill men.

They always talk at each other, but rarely with each other.

Both have good points but both ignore large swathes of reality that could upset their 'tribe'.

Red pillers are aware of modern problems, but often promote ideas and actions that directly conflict with religious moral guidance.

Tradcons often ignore the reality of Western dating/marriage in 2023 and rarely address the valid concerns of millions of young men.

BTW I mean a discussion around modern men and women, gender dynamics, dating, marriage, family, etc.

Not a debate on whether God exists or religion itself.

In the spotlight

True history of the two million acres opened for settlement in the April 22, 1889, Land Run. No, the land wasn't stolen. American taxpayers paid millions for it, twice.

An essay from 2012. If you want to understand why the people who call the shots don't get much public criticism, you need to know about the people I call the yacht guests. "They staff the non-profits and the quangos, they run small service-oriented businesses that cater to the yacht owners, they're professionals who have the yacht owners as clients, they work as managers for the yacht owners' businesses. They may not be wealthy, but they're comfortable, and they have access to opportunities and perks that are out of financial reach for the folks who aren't on the yacht. Their main job is not to rock the boat, but from time to time, they're called upon to defend the yacht and its owners against perceived threats."

Introducing Tulsa's Complacent City Council

From 2011: "One of the things that seemed to annoy City Hall bureaucrats about the old council was their habit of raising new issues to be discussed, explored, and acted upon. From the bureaucrats' perspective, this meant more work and their own priorities displaced by the councilors' pet issues.... [The new councilors are] content to be spoon-fed information from the mayor, the department heads, and the members and staffers of authorities, boards, and commissions. The Complacent Councilors won't seek out alternative perspectives, and they'll be inclined to dismiss any alternative points of view that are brought to them by citizens, because those citizens aren't 'experts.' They'll vote the 'right' way every time, and the department heads, authority members, and mayoral assistants won't have to answer any questions that make them uncomfortable."

BatesLine has presented over a dozen stories on the history of Tulsa's Greenwood district, focusing on the overlooked history of the African-American city-within-a-city from its rebuilding following the 1921 massacre, the peak years of the '40s and '50s, and its second destruction by government through "urban renewal" and expressway construction. The linked article provides an overview, my 2009 Ignite Tulsa talk, and links to more detailed articles, photos, films, and resources.

Steps to Nowhere
Tulsa's vanished near northside

Those concrete steps, brick foundations, and empty blocks up the hill and west of OSU Tulsa aren't ruins from 1921. They're the result of urban renewal in the 1990s and 2000s. Read my 2014 This Land Press story on the neighborhood's rise and demise and see photos of the neighborhood as it once was.

From 2015: "Having purged the cultural institutions and used them to brainwash those members of the public not firmly grounded in the truth, the Left is now purging the general public. You can believe the truth, but you have to behave as if the Left's delusions are true.

"Since the Left is finally being honest about the reality that some ethical viewpoint will control society, conservatives should not be shy about working to recapture the culture for the worldview and values that built a peaceful and prosperous civilization, while working to displace from positions of cultural influence the advocates of destructive doctrines that have led to an explosion of relational breakdown, mental illness, and violence."

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Latest links of interest:

Google's Culture of Fear

From the article: "Before the pernicious or the insidious, we of course begin with the deeply, hilariously stupid: from screenshots I've obtained, an insistence engineers no longer use phrases like "build ninja" (cultural appropriation), "nuke the old cache" (military metaphor), "sanity check" (disparages mental illness), or "dummy variable" (disparages disabilities). One engineer was "strongly encouraged" to use one of 15 different crazed pronoun combinations on his corporate bio (including "zie/hir," "ey/em," "xe/xem," and "ve/vir"), which he did against his wishes for fear of retribution. Per a January 9 email, the Greyglers, an affinity group for people over 40, is changing its name because not all people over 40 have gray hair, thus constituting lack of "inclusivity" (Google has hired an external consultant to rename the group)."

From the comments: "It is fascinating how so many successful organizations end up accidentally setting up incentives that reward and increase the influence of the dumbest people in the room. There are undoubtedly thousands of genius level engineers at Google, and yet they get their marching orders from people who couldn't pass a freshman calculus class."

Tulsa City Ordinances in 2003

If you're curious what Tulsa's zoning code and other ordinances were like in 2003, here they are, in PDF format, courtesy the late City Auditor Phil Wood, who put city government information online long before any official city website. Also includes the City Charter, list of officials from the founding of the city, sales tax ordinances, and bond issues.

MORE: City of Tulsa Executive Orders from 1990-2008.

A Handbook for Ruling Elder involvement in the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America

O. Palmer Robertson in 1988, regarding the importance of lay leadership in maintaining the orthodox direction of a denomination:

"The ruling elder gave birth to the Presbyterian Church in America. Not the preachers but the ruling elders. When the ministers were too cautious to take decisive action, the ruling elders took the lead. They formed the organizations and called the meetings that eventually led to the formation of the PCA.

"Now the ruling elder must devote himself to diligence in maintaining this great church. If the PCA is to realize fully its unique opportunities in the needy world today, ruling elders must show their commitment and concern by consistent involvement at every level of the church's life. Particularly at the General Assembly, the ruling elder must be present, and he must be heard. He who rules must do so with diligence. The only thing necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."

The Problem With Human Resources - Mockingbird

"My friend knew it was harassment, but didn't trust HR to handle the matter. Nobody did -- in her working class department, everyone had been through the same training, and had written off HR as an enemy. Desperate for freedom, my friend found a position in another department, and hoping to make a change as she left, she filed an HR grievance on the way out the door. Her grievance uncovered a trail of harassment that included testimonies of nearly a dozen other women, all of whom could have reported the man, but none of them trusted HR to do anything about it. The man in question was fired, but he might have been fired sooner if the general consensus among the campus working class was that HR only cared if race or sexual orientation were involved. Every institution has trouble garnering trust from its employees, but commitments to ineffective moral frameworks make the problem worse.

"Say what you will about Christianity, but it's been a historic catalyst of achieving the goals that HR programs aim for. Its initial spread came through the underclass of slaves, women, and the poor throughout the Roman Empire, developing one of the world's first truly extranational communities. Its adherents established the first hospitals to take care of the sick and elderly. It became a champion of literacy so that normal people could have direct access to its sacred texts (and reform its own corrupt religious hierarchy). Whether it's the end of chattel slavery, the American civil rights movement, the decolonization of the British empire, or the end of South African apartheid, the moral logic of Christianity has historically been a tool of the dispossessed to challenge their oppressors. Why has Christianity been successful in this way? One imagines that its success is, in no small part, due to the fact it allows for all sins, including oppression, to be expiated as water under a bridge."

One Good Thing Every Day | Blood-Cancer.com

Some great self-care advice for anyone, but particularly those dealing with long-term health challenges, by Connie Connely, who was one of my mom's colleagues at Catoosa Elementary and her dear friend: Write down one good thing that happened every day. Set small goals and plan for activities to look forward to. Reach out to a friend. List things that are bothering you. Be alert to decision fatigue. Drink water and eat healthy meals. Get enough sleep.

Why the Mental Health of Liberal Girls Sank First and Fastest

Jonathan Haidt, co-author with Greg Lukianoff of "The Coddling of the American Mind" writes:

"Greg is prone to depression, and after hospitalization for a serious episode in 2007, Greg learned CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). In CBT you learn to recognize when your ruminations and automatic thinking patterns exemplify one or more of about a dozen "cognitive distortions," such as catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, fortune telling, or emotional reasoning. Thinking in these ways causes depression, as well as being a symptom of depression. Breaking out of these painful distortions is a cure for depression.

"What Greg saw in 2013 were students justifying the suppression of speech and the punishment of dissent using the exact distortions that Greg had learned to free himself from. Students were saying that an unorthodox speaker on campus would cause severe harm to vulnerable students (catastrophizing); they were using their emotions as proof that a text should be removed from a syllabus (emotional reasoning). Greg hypothesized that if colleges supported the use of these cognitive distortions, rather than teaching students skills of critical thinking (which is basically what CBT is), then this could cause students to become depressed. Greg feared that colleges were performing reverse CBT.

"I thought the idea was brilliant because I had just begun to see these new ways of thinking among some students at NYU. I volunteered to help Greg write it up, and in August 2015 our essay appeared in The Atlantic with the title: The Coddling of the American Mind. Greg did not like that title; his original suggestion was "Arguing Towards Misery: How Campuses Teach Cognitive Distortions." He wanted to put the reverse CBT hypothesis in the title."

Weddings are daunting to plan for anyone, but for people with a disability it can be overwhelming - ABC News

"Hayley said she was riding high on a 'dopamine rush' and told her partner she could plan the whole thing in just two weeks. And she very nearly did.

"'But once that high had disappeared it was like falling off a cliff and everything stopped,' she said.

"Hayley has ADHD, and during the most exhilarating time of her life, it hit her extremely hard.

'I was lucky that in those two weeks, I had managed to go through my excel spreadsheets send out a lot of inquiries and got most things sorted and underway before I crashed,' she said.

"Decision fatigue was one of the biggest challenges she encountered.

"Decision fatigue is where the more decisions a person makes over the course of a day, the more physically, mentally, and emotionally depleted they become."

You're Morally Obligated to Do Remarkable Things - Dr Jordan B Peterson | Facebook

"You're Morally Obligated to Do Remarkable Things. Why?

"Well, partly because life is so difficult and challenging that unless you give it everything you have, the chances are very high that it will embitter you. And then you'll be a force for darkness. That's not good. Also, the fact that life is short and can be brutal can terrify you into hiding. But you can flip that on its head and understand that since you're all in, you might as well take the adventurous risks. That's a very good thing to understand.

"What is also useful to understand is that there isn't anything more adventurous than the truth. This is something that took me a long time to figure out. You can craft your words to get what you want.

"If you're attempting to say what you believe to be true and attempting to act in the manner that you think is most appropriate, that's genuinely you. If you're trying to live in the truth, you have the force of reality behind you, and that seems like a good deal. You have the reality and the adventure.

"So, why is that a moral obligation? Well, if you hide and you don't let what's inside of you out--and you don't bring into the world what you could bring--you become cynical and bitter. Not only will you not add to the world what you could add, but you'll start being jealous of people who are competent and doing well and work to destroy them.

"That's the pathway to hell."

Spalding's Official Foot Ball Guide | HathiTrust Digital Library

A guide to football as played by colleges, with rules, records from the previous seasons, team photos, commentary, and a schedule for the new season. All-American players were mainly from the Ivy League, but Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Notre Dame, and Holy Cross were also represented. Scoring consisted of 6 points for a touchdown followed by a place kick or drop kick through the goal posts, 5 points if the kick failed, 4 points for a drop kick from the field, 2 points to the other team for a "safety touchdown." Must move five yards in three downs or lose possession, and "the quarter-back, if he run with the ball, must cross the line of scrimmage at least five yards out from the point where the ball was put in play." Because this new rule lines were marked every five yards along the length of the 330' x 160' field out from the center, creating a gridiron pattern. St. John's College finished 5-4 for the season, thanks to not playing against bigger teams, mostly. They were slaughtered by Virginia 48-0, but they beat Gallaudet 22-0 in the final game of the season.

Tiny Moore Live! Download - Acoustic Disc

A live recording of a 1980 performance by mandolinist Tiny Moore, who played with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, Billy Jack Wills and His Western Swing Band, and Merle Haggard and the Strangers. Tiny plays big band and jazz standards on fiddle and mandolin, backed by drums, bass, and piano. $15 to download 28 tracks. In a half-hour video, Dix Bruce, David Grisman, and Hayes Griffin discuss the Tiny Moore live recording and play samples from a few of the tracks.


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